40 UP prisoners transferred to Standish Max on Monday

More to come this week, near future

Posted
7/27/09

STANDISH — The Standish Maximum Correctional Facility (SMF) may be a level-V security center, but 40 level-I inmates from the Hiawatha Correctional Facility in Kincheloe, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, were transported to SMF on Monday, with more to come before the end of the week.

“Starting today (July 27), we started receiving prisoners from the Hiawatha prison in the UP,” said SMF Administrative Assistant Rebecca Bailey on Monday. “We’re getting in level-I’s.

“We’re going to get 320 (inmates from Hiawatha), but this week we’re getting 160. … They’ll be kept totally separate,” she added. “This is only temporary. … They’re (Michigan Department of Corrections) going to house level-I’s here until California makes a decision.”

Bailey says the lower security risk inmates will be kept in the beds that have been emptied out since it was announced that the state planned on closing SMF. She added the inmates imported from the North will be kept in SMF for four-six weeks and their exit from Hiawatha is part of the department of corrections’ plans to close Hiawatha by Aug. 8.

When it comes to the above-mentioned California issue, Bailey says she is unsure if the corrections department out west will be looking at SMF in any different light due to the Hiawatha inmates being imported there for a short period of time.

“I don’t know if it’ll have any influence on the (California) situation,” she said. “We should be hearing something. They (California delegation) said two to four weeks (before we hear from them again) when they were here.”